Present conventional seed analysis methods used in genetic, biochemical, or phenotypic analysis, require at least a part of the seed to be removed and processed. In removing some seed tissue, various objectives may need to be met. These may include one or more of the following objectives:
(a) maintain seed viability after collection of seed tissue, if required.
(b) obtain at least a minimum required amount of tissue, without affecting viability.
(c) obtain tissue from a specific location on the seed, often requiring the ability to orient the seed in a specific position.
(d) maintain a particular throughput level for efficiency purposes.
(e) reduce or virtually eliminate contamination.
(f) allow for the tracking of separate tissues and their correlation to seeds from which the tissues were obtained.
Conventional seed testing technologies do not address these requirements sufficiently, resulting in pressures on capital and labor resources, and thus illustrate the need for an improvement in the state of the art. The current methods are relatively low throughput, have substantial risk of cross-contamination, and tend to be inconsistent because of a reliance on significant manual handling, orienting, and removal of the tissue from the seed. This can affect the type of tissue taken from the seed and the likelihood that the seed will germinate. There is a need to eliminate the resources current methods require for cleaning between removal of individual portions of seed tissue. There is also a need to reduce or minimize cross-contamination between unique tissue portions to be tested by carry-over or other reasons, or any contamination from any source of any other tissue. Furthermore, there is a need for more reliability and accuracy.
In addition, some of the objectives presented above can be conflicting and even antagonistic. For example, obtaining a useful amount of tissue while maintaining seed viability requires taking some seed tissue, but not too much. Moreover, high-throughput methodologies involve rapid operations but may be accompanied by decreases in accuracy and increased risk of contamination, such that the methods must be done more slowly than is technically possible in order to overcome the limitations. These multiple objectives have therefore existed in the art and have not been satisfactorily addressed or balanced by the currently available methods and apparatuses. There is a need in the art to overcome the above-described types of problems such that the maximum number of objectives is realized.